


come as you are (as you were)

by thychesters



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Domesticity, F/M, Gen, Slice of Life, family bonding!! give me more of it naughty dog you cowards!!, post-u4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23266828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thychesters/pseuds/thychesters
Summary: sam drake spends a week with his sister-in-law, trying not to think of all the ways this could have gone differently had they known of one another prior.set post-u4; things may still be a little rocky, but at least they're healing.
Relationships: Elena Fisher & Samuel Drake, Nathan Drake/Elena Fisher
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	come as you are (as you were)

**Author's Note:**

> this is actually almost a year old, oops! i was going through some unfinished uncharted fic i had lying around in a doc. someday i'll go back and finish the rest, lmao.

Nathan pulls a lot of day shifts, wanders down to the docks to sort out something or other, Sam doesn’t necessarily know, only knows the basics of where his brothers runs off to for hours on end. On the flip side Elena works from home as far as he can tell, tying up loose ends on travel articles, last he heard, and Sam’s the one caught in the middle, no real direction and camp alternating between the couch and the set-up in Elena’s office. They bought the salvage company with the coins he gave them, they say, and he nods accordingly when they bitch about paperwork.

But Nate being gone most of the day provides his brother and wife time to get to know one another, or avoid one another like electrons, orbiting one another but never colliding. If that’s how electrons work; he isn’t entirely positive (ha! hey, he’s got jokes), he was always much more interested in history. It doesn’t help matters any that they started off on the wrong foot, to put it mildly. For two people who didn’t know the other existed for the past decade (despite one of them supposedly being dead), he’d like to think they’re doing well enough—or as well as they can, given that Elena Fisher’s first introduction to one Samuel Drake consisted of a few too many lies.

To her credit, when they interact it isn’t stilted, awkward small talk, and he can see it in the lines of her face, her eyes, the way she holds herself that she still hasn’t decided on where they stand. They just met maybe a month ago after years of not knowing the other existed, so he can’t say he blames her. He isn’t much better.

She admits to him, this time he’s staying with them again, that she figures thus far it’s gone smoother than the first time he came to visit after King’s Bay. The house had been full of air that was too tense and an elephant taking up residence in an already too small house.

He keeps to himself for the most part, camped out on the air mattress they’ve set up in her office (which he can’t help but feel a little bad about), and perusing their bookshelves for something interesting and not total shit to keep him occupied.

For all that talk of domesticity, of warm beds and warmer meals, that stupid kitschy, homey life, Sam has to say it’s incredibly dull, and boring, and… kind of amazing. Not in the awe inspiring way that knocks him on his ass, but something he supposes he can admire. His brother’s happy enough, he’s safe, alive, and there’s a roof over his head. Sam’s not sure he quite envies him, but he’s beginning to warm up to the idea. Nathan is happy, alive, and that’s all that matters.

He bides his time between reading and going for long walks exploring the neighborhood, mapping out the area until he’s sure he could make his way around in pitch darkness, scour street corners like he’s ducking away from thugs and mercenaries, and then makes his way back in time for dinner.

It isn’t the most exciting thing, and he’s still waiting for a call from Sullivan, but it’s… he doesn’t have a word for it yet.

Elena, apparently, thinks otherwise, because it’s a Tuesday afternoon when she’s interrupting his re-reading of _Huck Finn_ for the third time, telling him to quit moping, he’s coming with her. She turns on her heel, a glimmer of something like amusement in her eye, and he makes a mental note to ask Nathan to tell him exactly just how he met this woman and managed to rope her into sticking around.

He appreciates the tenacity, but he doesn’t consider venturing out to the grocery store to be the highlight of his week. But she’s also his ride, so he shoves his hands in his pockets and follows her down the aisles, admiring the off-brand orange juices stacked next to the ones that claim to be organic and cost ten bucks.

“You never told me what you don’t like to eat,” she says, and it feels sudden and out of nowhere. He can’t recall dietary habits being a topic of choice when it comes to making conversation.

“Uh, I don’t like apple sauce,” he gets out after a minute, because part of him wants to tell her he’ll eat just about anything if it comes down to it. Drake boys are Hoovers, he tells her. Let no food go to waste.

She doesn’t quite frown, but then her gaze wanders to something over his shoulder that he can’t see and then back to him. “Apple sauce? I was expecting something like broccoli or carrots.”

Now he grins, because not only are they Hoovers, but they’re good for wit, too. “Nah, that’s how I got all this lean muscle here—probably the least picky eater you’re ever gonna meet. Nathan, on the other hand…let’s just say someone didn’t eat all his veggies.”

She laughs right there in the middle of the produce section, weighing out apples with one hand and readjusting her hold on her basket with the other. He takes it, decides to be chivalrous while she goes to rifle through meats and pick out steak for tonight.

Maybe, he decides, he’ll offer to cook dinner.

— — —

Elena latches onto him after that, slowly but surely, makes a little more effort to interact with him, and he can’t say he necessarily made it easy for her to, either. He doesn’t want to be a bother, but doesn’t want to look ungrateful, either, especially with the noticeable strain he put on this relationship—the underlying problems had already been there, but it wasn’t as if he’d helped matters any. He’d just picked at the scab they were trying to pretend didn’t exist.

He starts asking about her work, starts out making idle chitchat because it’s better to hear about what she’s been up to for the past decade than regaling her with tales of rec. yard fights and solitary. Where Nathan’s clumsy Sam’s nosy, starts reading through all old articles and blog posts and anything else he can get his hands on like he’s hungry for it, like it’s the next job he needs to know the ins and outs of. He likens it to work, because Nathan wants them to get to know each other, doesn’t say so in so many words, but wants them to get along, bring his family together cohesively. _How_ they were all brought together, unfortunately, is still a sore subject.

He starts name dropping guys like Lazarević and Yinsen, asks about this Navarro she mentioned in one draft but never expanded on, and Nathan comes home one night to find them on the couch splitting a six-pack and talking grenades and Shambhala.

“Tree sap? Seriously?”

“He didn’t tell you?” she asks, eyebrows raised as she takes another pull. She’s nestled against the arm of the couch, knees tucked into her chest and well into her second beer, and he’s sprawled across the other end like he’s about to melt into it, taking up too much space and neither sorry nor chided for it.

“He did, it just… sounds like a crock o’ shit until someone else confirms it,” he says, twisting his head until his neck cracks.

“There were witnesses,” she tells him. “Most of them are dead or blown up, but there were witnesses.”

“Uh-huh.” He nods, hums, makes like he wants to ask about her scars from the explosion she mentioned because his curiosity threatens to get the better of him, but he doesn’t. In the right light he can catch the traces of one at her collarbone, just below the dip where it slips under her shirt when the material rides up. There are others, he figures, littering the side of her body, all pink and white and formerly ugly, angry reminders that she survived even when they thought she wouldn’t, all that fear hinted at in the cliff notes version of the story his brother gave him. They could sit on the couch trading stories all night, the three of them, if they wanted, he supposes. Highlight the jagged pockmark on the second knuckle on his ring finger, the thin line at his lower lip from a bar fight, the one at the jut of his nose when Rafe nearly smashed it in with the butt of a gun.

He can tell she has questions of her own, too, ones she’s dying to ask but they’re either not ready for or too afraid of the answers.

They’re stories for another time, another lifetime, maybe, and he sits up when the front door opens.

Elena’s already on her feet, reaching up to press a kiss at the corner of her husband’s mouth before she makes for the stairs and bids them goodnight. Whether his brother intends on following her Sam doesn’t know, and he doesn’t much care to find out. Nathan eyes him, eyes the coffee table, and he almost wants to laugh at the look on his face as he pulls himself out of the cushions and swallows up the last of the dregs.

“You drank all the beer.”

“You smell like shit.”

“But the _beer_.”

———

“I was in a sorority in college,” Elena tells him out of the blue on a Saturday morning, decked out in her pajamas and cradling a cup of coffee like her life depends on it. According to Nathan, _theirs_ does. Something about caffeine demons and the like. He’s busy frowning at the controller in his hands while she eggs him on, because the last time he played any games it was a Sega, or Space Invaders, and that consisted of two buttons and a joystick, not… eight. Or, well, ten. But then he has to count the ones at the top, so that’s what, fourteen? Jesus.

“Don’t do it,” Nathan warns, and Sam doesn’t even have to turn around to see if she’s rolling her eyes at him. Still, he’s… curious.

He presses the start button like she told him to, waits for it to load and for the graphics she said were decent at the time but have improved since then. All he knows is that this _thing_ is bright orange and kinda ugly, and he’s supposed to run around breaking things and picking up fruit, it’s not a lot to work on.

“Oh yeah?” he says anyway, and finds that for someone who doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing, he’s doing pretty okay. He hasn’t died yet—okay, so he died once. He has two more of those heads up there. Nathan scoffs behind him. So, what’s her story?

“Oh yeah,” she says, and he can hear the smirk in her voice. She pauses as he dies again, and he waits for the other shoe to drop. Can sense her leaning forward and trying to get into his head, damn her. “Lot of pillow fights.”

The orange rat/mouse thing dies, officially, and Sam twists to stare at them both, finds Elena cackling and Nathan shaking his head because he told him so. He made eggs and bacon for breakfast, way to show the gratitude. He’s a _guest_.

“ _Really._ ” His tone is flat, and he’s half-waiting for Elena to choke on her own spit. And she thought they had a terrible sense of humor.

Maybe he’ll ask about it later.

———

Nathan brings him up to the attic at some point, weaves him through the maze of boxes and shelves he’s set up—“you drag all this shit up here?”— and says they ought to start at the beginning. He digs through notes and journals and photographs and other footage to the tune of Nathan’s narration, leads him through the jungles and mountains and deserts he missed, all the adventures he was never part of, and he can’t help but feel a small pang of hurt and resentment. Guilt follows it soon after, and his intuition tells him his brother feels the same way.

While Nathan Drake’s out there seeing the world, conquering and saving it all at once, Samuel Drake’s sitting in a prison cell letting his obsession fester. He can’t blame him, can’t hold it against him, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come at him like a sucker punch.

His little brother drugged, his little brother shot, his little brother flirting with death more times than he cares to count, let alone think of, and the entire time he was none the wiser. His little brother could have been dead, and he never would have known about it.

He wonders, idly, if this is how Elena felt, if it was in different degrees. Different terms, sure, but that doesn’t make the notion hurt any less.

Nathan fidgets, and Sam sets down a journal on the Rub’ al Khali with the same reverence he would the first edition of _A General History of Pyrates_ he did once so many years ago. Another lifetime, one that hardly feels like it exists anymore.

“Any lost cities you’ve managed _not_ to destroy yet?”

———

He’s on the prowl for a beer, tromping down the stairs at a decent clip and skipping over the last one as he goes. He stops cold when he reaches the kitchen, one foot in the common area and the one ready to pivot back the way he came when he spots them at the counter, crowded around one another. They haven’t noticed him yet, too caught up in the way they’re standing a little too close to be anything but cordial, her hip at his side as his arm goes to encircle her as if there’s still too much space between them.

He can’t help but feel he’s infringing on something, like there’s a barrier he crossed without totally realizing it was there, like he’s verging on voyeurism, interrupting a quiet moment he has no part in. He’s like a ghost in a home that no longer belongs to him, like he exists in a timeline he shouldn’t, like he’s taking up a space that wasn’t entirely ready to be shared.

A phantom sensation creeps up like he should say something, remind them that he, too, exists and apologize for it. It’s less likening himself to a nuisance and more butting in on a moment he wasn’t meant to be privy to.

He does, however, have enough sense to turn tail and return from whence he came when Nathan ducks his head against the side of her neck, because that much privacy he can afford them.

He marvels at it, sometimes, at the way they orbit one another, the way she leans back into him without even looking, the way he’ll reach for her hand without thinking about it as they walk. It’s like watching his kid grow up and grow up well, although Nathan was never his kid to begin with, and he can’t even begin to fathom how he swung her, stuck a ring on her finger and landed a happy little household, a far cry from where they started. He has to admit he’s more than a little pleased with the way things turned out, though the bitter kid in him still wants to rib him for it sometimes, can’t help the little jabs that have no real heat to them.

He wanders back toward the stairs to the tune of their gentle murmurs, steels himself to prepare for noises that are anything but as he’s grabbing his coat, granted them free reign of their home as he ducks out for a smoke break and one of his nightly walks.

He never did get that beer.

———

The next time Sam visits them it’s two months after his last, his nose just this side of broken (again) and pockets lined with mangled cigarettes and stories to tell. He hasn’t even gotten to regale them with the tale of how he and Sully landed the gig, slapping a few silver coins on the kitchen table when Nathan blurts out that they’re expecting, that Elena’s pregnant. The coins clatter in the space between their coffee mugs and she’s beaming, Nathan practically beside himself.

Ten years ago he would’ve cuffed his brother upside the head; a year ago would’ve scratched the back of his neck and found a way to duck out because it wasn’t his place. Time goes slipping through his fingertips like grains of sand.

He slaps Nathan on the back, tells him, “You better not fuck this up.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” He rolls his eyes, but the grin — no, the smile — that’s been there since Sam walked in the door is still there, and Elena makes quick work of reaching up to wind her arms around his shoulders, and it’s then he’s reminded of how short she is. She huffs a laugh as he bends his knees.

———

They opt to name her Cassandra Morgan. His throat is tight, but his eyes don’t well up until he sees her, pink and soft and way too fragile and innocent for the likes of him to hold.

Elena’s features are drawn and tired, and Nathan’s gaze keeps flickering from her to the too-small newborn cradled in his too-large arms, but it’s then that he thinks he gets it, really, truly gets it.


End file.
